We live in a society in which economic rationalism predominates and those who simply discount or dismiss economic arguments around migration policy risk being ignored. There is something abhorrent about reducing the life of an asylum seeker to a dollar amount on a balance sheet. For this reason, it’s important that an economically-minded approach doesn’t replace calls for more compassion, but operates alongside it.

Last month, revelations made in a Senate inquiry by Transfield Services, the company contracted to run the Nauru detention centre, illustrated how the Australian government’s callousness and immorality on the issue of asylum seekers is beginning to infect the national consciousness.

It’s reflective of just how punitive Australia’s refugee policy has become that the government still has the ability to horrify thinking Australians this long after Kevin Rudd announced his PNG Solution. At the time it seemed the lowest ebb in what has been a very dark decade for Australia’s treatment of the world’s most vulnerable people. But under Scott Morrison, there have been almost weekly revelations of further brutality inflicted upon refugees that still have the power to shock and abhor a nation that has long struggled to empathise with non-white victims.